Tuesday, October 31, 2017

The Lost Ones

I’m
a sucker for sentimental songs and the mind-pictures they evoke. ‘Suzanne’ by
Leonard Cohen is probably the best example of this. Any song from the
soundtrack of ‘A Man and a Woman’ is an easy second. So, it wasn’t a surprise
when ‘Suzanne’ recently slipped back into my car and took me back in time.

It
got me to thinking about all those people, especially the women, who have come
into and then slipped out of my life. It’s a subject I’ve examined in past
blogs numerous times. That theme has also crept into some of my novels. A few
of those women left an indelible mark on my consciousness while others were
merely blips in a time and place long since forgotten. The images of those
gentle souls who remain have become blurry by a fading mind yet their impact on
my life somehow remains poignant and memorable.

It
stretches as far back as grade school and the redhead who sat just two desks
ahead of me. It was my girlfriend in high school and the one in college. It was
the special connection I felt with Susan and those friends, acquaintances,
associates, colleagues and dates I had during those lean, mean years until I
found ‘the one.’ Most have been relegated to the dust-bin of my mind sans
pictures and only traces in old work papers and letters. Tina was such a
person.

It
was late 1967 and winter was fast approaching. We were two lost souls seeking
solace and companionship in a small town a dozen miles north of Copenhagen,
Denmark. We shared a mutual dissatisfaction with our jobs, a yearning for
companionship and doubt about our future in Scandinavia. We were surrounded by
signs of an encroaching winter and had no idea what our next steps were going
to be…other than get out of town before the first snow storm locked us in for
another six months.

I
can’t remember where I first meet Tina. It was probably at some student party
in the city centre of Copenhagen, not far from the harbor. She worked as a
nanny for a well-to-do couple who lived outside of town. This twenty-year-old
expat tried to escape the confines of her work as often as she could. She would
hang out at the university, drinking strong coffee in the student center,
sharing a weed or two in the shadows of the campus and partying too much on
weekends.

Drugs
were easy to acquire back then and the laws loose. Sex was a casual affair and
there were plenty of male suitors to answer her physical needs. Tina earned
extra money by waitressing in her spare time. She would earn an extra Kroner
wherever she could and never apologize for her short-comings or ambition.

Back
home was a closed book. There were occasional references to a father who had
passed away a couple of years earlier, a mother with a serious drinking problem
and a younger sister Tina worried a lot about. I never found out how Tina ended
up in Denmark. She never said and I never asked.

She
was nothing like the kind of woman I thought I wanted in my life permanently
but she was an anchor in our foreign wilderness and another voice to talk to. She
was damaged goods but I was a good listener.

I
thought a lot about Tina and whatever happened to her after I stuck out my
thumb for the south of France. I made it as far as Paris before malnutrition
and loneliness got the best of me. Once safely ensconced back in the Twin
Cities I sent a package of Tina’s clothes to her Mom along with a letter.

Ten
months later Tina replied with several letters. They covered a period of time
in my own life when I was trying to establish a career and adjust to life
stateside. I was working fulltime as a writer for the Minnesota Department of Health.
Most evenings, I was volunteering at the public television station and mixing
and matching relation-ships in hopes of finding one that would stick.

I
came across those letters recently. There were four of them. All written after
Tina had returned home and was trying to put her life back together again. I
shared those letters in two blogs: Letters from Tina, part one and part two.

After
those blogs were published, I went on a voyeur hunt. I found nothing on Google
about her but managed to find, I think, her Facebook page. I have no pictures
of us back during that time and there were only faint clues that led me to
believe it was the same Tina back in her Southwestern home town.

Now
she’s gone again. No more Facebook page. There is no trace of her on Google. Maybe
she got married and changed her name. Maybe she moved on ‘again’ and purposely
left no clues behind. Maybe the drugs finally did her in. She’s now just a name
and a fading memory once again lost to time and space and no cyber clues for me
to follow up on.

She
joins a list of other women who are nowhere to be found. My wife and I have
strikingly different memories of our own first encounter and subsequent dating.
Memories are a funny thing. Truth be told, I’d trust hers more than mine. So
who knows what really happened between Tina and I. Or for that matter, all
those other women who touched my soul back then.

Were
those relationships all as one-sided as I remembered them? Or was there
something there after all? Perhaps intentions not realized or thoughts not
grasped? Might it have turned out differently if only…? It doesn’t really
matter anymore. What’s done is done. Tina joins that group of women for whom I
have only the fondest memories and wishes for continuing health and happiness.

Perhaps
they’ll arise again in some future story or song; embellished and enhanced by a
fading memory and tendency to puff up the edges and trim the fat. Bright bold
colors where muted grays and blacks might have really existed. A rich tapestry
of thoughts and imagination run amok amid the boundless energy and hopeless
optimism of a star-struck kid looking for who knows what.